"Inspiration"

Yesterday I received this e-mail from my friend Mark Whitten. You can see that with his note he forwarded me an e- mail that I had sent him shortly after my diagnosis almost 2 years ago now.

Peter,

I would like to wish you all the best in your triathlon journey! My thoughts will be with you August 30th! I know you will complete this and surprise yourself in the process…

Please see below e-mail. I hope it will also serve as inspiration!!! I kept it for that reason!

Saludos!


Sent: Wed Oct 10 5:49:37 2007
Subject: Running

Excellent. I too will be running a spring marathon....london in early may. Maybe that can work for you somehow? I would also love to be a long distance(no pun intended) amateur coach for you if you're interested in any training thoughts. This will be my 5th shot at the distance. My PB is 3 hours 11 minutes, and am still committed to going under 3 hours sometime in my life.
Mark I will share something very personal with you which only my family knows at this time. One week before my diagnosis I officially signed up to do Ironman Canada next august, in Penticton BC. A dream that has been 15 years in the making. My plans have not changed.
This friday I start both chemotherapy and radiation treatments which they promise will make me very sick. Throughout this I will be holding on to my Ironman dream very tightly. To have any hope to be ready for august I have to be already very fit by marathon time in may.
As to running Boston, you indeed need to qualify, but quite frankly I don't know what the attraction is. The distance is the same everywhere, as is the gratification if you are doing it for the right reasons. I have run Detroit, Toronto and London, ontario twice and definitely enjoyed the smaller local race much more.

peter

Oh how incredibly naive I was. In hind sight it all seems so weird. To start with, that I ever thought I was still going to do the 2008 event, and secondly the prophetic nature of the whole thing. Even though I lost a entire year somehow I did indeed held on to my dream. Also I can't believe Mark kept the note. Somehow he believed in me long after I had stopped doing so.

What's even more ironic is that today I received a note from Ironman Canada asking me for comfirmation of my attendance. They very same message I got last year which led to the dream coming alive again. It was nice that this time I didn't have to send my regrets!

I wish to dedicate day 329 to Cole Robilliard who continues to fight an uphill battle against the evils of cancer.

"It's all about decisions! We choose what decision we make everyday!"---Horst Schulze

“If you only do what you know you can do- you never do very much."---Tom Krause

love
peter